On Monday, July 3, when I met Malcolm Pomerantz, I was ten years and half a month old, and he was twelve years and two months old. I was a short, black piano man; he was a tall, white saxophonist. I had a quickness and, if I say so myself, a certain grace of movement, but Malcolm proceeded always at a measured pace, stoop-shouldered, almost shambling. On the surface, we were so radically different that we would never find ourselves in the same police lineup of suspects.
I was home alone that day. Because Grandpa lived in a low-crime neighborhood and because I had recently reached an age expressed in double digits, my mother had reluctantly conceded that I could stay by myself during the day. Until she found another singing gig, she had only the waitressing at Woolworth’s, and she felt too pinched to pay for a sitter. In truth, she couldn’t have been as bad off as she evidently felt, considering that Grandpa Teddy wouldn’t take a dime from her for rent or food. Although he claimed that having us there, no longer being alone, was worth a fortune to him, and although we were more at home than we had been in the fourth-floor walk-up, it galled my mother to be dependent.
In return for her concession, she provided a list of rules that I swore to obey, the first of which was that I would never, never, never, under any circumstances, open the door to a stranger, not even if he wore a police uniform, not even if he dressed like a priest. On those hot summer days, lacking air-conditioning, we needed to keep a number of windows open to cross-ventilate the house, and although the screens snapped into place from the inside, any of them could be cut or wrenched loose from outside in no time at all. Consequently, if some despicable criminal tried to enter the house by a window, I must at once begin screaming as loud as I could for help; I must race to the second floor, lock myself in the master bedroom, remove a window screen, climb out onto the front-porch roof, and continue screaming until neighbors came into the street to see what had me so terrified.
I had no nearby community center to go to, and right there in the first-floor front room stood a fine piano. I had every intention of playing that grand instrument during the day, and Mom knew that I would; but apparently it didn’t occur to her that when I was pounding the ivories, I wouldn’t be likely to hear a burglar cutting a window screen at the back of the house. If it did occur to her, no doubt she assured herself that no sneak thief was likely to break into a place where he could hear someone rocking a piano.
I was doing just that, rocking through Fats Domino’s “I’m Gonna Be a Wheel Someday,” when Malcolm Pomerantz rang the doorbell. He had to ring it like five or six times before I came to a couple of quiet bars that allowed me to hear it.
Not having forgotten Fiona Cassidy or Lucas Drackman, or my philandering father with his new beard, I approached the door most cautiously and peered through one of the sidelights. On the porch stood an unlikely figure, a gawky boy with a prominent Adam’s apple, slumped shoulders, and arms that seemed half again as long as they ought to be. He dressed like an adult in highly polished black wing tips, gray dress pants, and a short-sleeved white shirt with thin blue vertical lines. I hate to say it, but being dressed like an adult did not mean that he had style, because he didn’t. His pants were cinched a couple of inches above his navel, revealing white socks in the black brogues and making his torso look as abbreviated as that of a dwarf. Even on a warm summer day, the spread collar of his white shirt was buttoned all the way to the neck.
The only interesting thing about him was the saxophone he held.
Suddenly aware of me at the sidelight, he stepped away from the door and faced me through the glass. “Good afternoon,” he said.
“It isn’t noon yet,” I replied. “Anyway, I’m not allowed to open the door to strangers.”
Long, pale face. Sad hound-dog eyes made large by the thick lenses of his black-rimmed glasses. Hair lightly oiled and combed straight back from his forehead. In spite of the saxophone, I thought he’d probably grow up to be an undertaker.
He said, “I’m not a stranger. I’m Malcolm Pomerantz, and I live across the street.”
“You’re a stranger to me.”
“I heard the piano and thought Mr. Bledsoe must be home.”
“I’m not Mr. Bledsoe.”
“If you hadn’t told me, I would have been entirely fooled. The resemblance is uncanny.”
I liked how quick he came back with that, but I wasn’t going to be easy. “You’re a wise guy, huh?”
“I’ve been known to be. I guess you’re Jonah.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Maybe? You have amnesia? Listen, sometimes Mr. Bledsoe lets me jam with him.”
“How do I know that? He never mentioned you to me.”
“And here I thought he talked about me incessantly. Who’s got you thinking this neighborhood is Hell’s Kitchen?”